Citizens Advice is running a campaign throughout 2015 aimed at improving the private rented sector.

In the last year more than 80,000 people came to us suffering a problem with a privately rented home.

That’s 230 people every day, hit by issues from illegal eviction to harassment to lost deposits and struggles to secure the most basic repairs.

The private rental sector remains a market in which consumers are woefully under-protected. We want this to change. We don’t see why renters should expect anything less than the protections consumers take for granted elsewhere – repairs that get done, systems to protect them from cowboys, refunds when things go badly wrong.

Talk about abuse is a campaign to encourage people to look for signs of domestic abuse among their friends and family, to talk about it, listen and support, and suggest further help.

Last year one in every fifteen women, and one in every 33 men experienced domestic abuse at the hands of their partner or former partne

Specialists – in the form of refugees, legal professionals and police, and helplines or support services – play a critical role for many victims. However, many victims don’t engage with these groups, and this is the problem we are addressing.

Self-employment is now a mainstream career option and works well for many people, but it can be complicated, particularly when you’re first starting.

Citizens Advice wants simpler and more responsive policies that give self-employed people the security to plan and balance their lives, while developing their business.

But we also want to reduce “bogus” self-employment, where people whose work has all the hallmarks of employment have been classified as self-employed and had their rights compromised, to reduce their employers’ costs and responsibilities.

More than one in five people in the UK experience problems with goods and services. A quarter of them spend more than four hours trying to sort out these problems, one in ten having to take time off work to do so.

So new laws which clarify rules around such thorny issues as refunds, repairs or replacements are to be welcomed by consumers and their representative groups.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 came into effect on October 1 and streamlines eight pieces of legislation into one. This should make life a little easier for shoppers who encountered more than 18 million problems with consumer goods and services over a 12 month period.

Big Energy Saving Week; a national campaign to help people cut their fuel bills and get all the financial support they are entitled to. Our big energy saving campaigns happen on a regular basis throughout Citizens Advice Lancashire West.

The week focuses on raising public awareness of the switching energy supplier/tariff to get the best deal and efficiency issues. This is the fifth Big Energy Saving Week and is a partnership between Citizens Advice, the Energy Saving Trust and the Department of Energy and Climate Change with the support of numerous organizations, charities and companies.

If you see an advert for a service that you think is inaccurate or misleading then you can act to get it taken down.

You do this by making a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which has the power to ban adverts that break the rules.

As part of its Mad about the Ad campaign Citizens Advice is currently focusing on misleading letting agent ads.